The EVGA e-GeForce 9800 GTX is pitted against their e-GeForce 8800 GTX with ACS³ cooling, which debuted in November, 2006 and is still going strong - especially when it was paired with another GeForce 8800 GTX from MSI.

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX w/ACS3 Cooling

Hardware and Operating System

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 - 3.0GHz Conroe Core - 4MB L2 Cache - 1333MHz FSB
• BFG nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
• 4GB Corsair XMS PC8500 DDR2 SDRAM 5-5-5-18-2T @ 400MHz
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
• Tagan TG1100-U96 Turbojet Power Supply
• Dell 3007WFP LCD Monitor
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 / DirectX 9.0c

Graphics Cards, Drivers, and Driver Settings

• EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX - 576MHz Core / 1350MHz Shader / 900MHz Memory (1800MHz Effective)
• EVGA e-GeForce 9800 GTX - 675MHz Core / 1688MHz Shader / 1100MHz Memory (2200MHz Effective)
• GeForce 8800 GTX - ForceWare Beta 169.44
• GeForce 9800 GTX - ForceWare Beta 174.44
• 32-Bit Color
• Vsync Disabled
• 60Hz Refresh Rate
• High Quality Texture Filtering
• Gamma Correct Antialiasing

Test Applications

• BioShock
• Call of Duty 4
• Crysis
• Dark Messiah
• F.E.A.R.
• Oblivion

Notes

• Antialiasing was set to "Override any application setting" in the driver for Oblivion.
• Anisotropic filtering was set to 8x in the driver for Oblivion.

In-game graphics settings that were used during testing are documented here. Maximum quality settings were enabled in BioShock, Call of Duty 4, F.E.A.R., and Oblivion. Crysis was tested at medium graphics settings. All in-game settings in Dark Messiah were at their maximum quality with the exception of texture detail, which was set to the recommended high instead of very high.

BioShock Settings

Call of Duty 4 Settings

Crysis Settings

Dark Messiah Settings

F.E.A.R. Settings

Oblivion Settings

Next Page: Benchmark Results and Conclusion